Our meeting on Thursday 8th August 2024 was another of our Shield Competitions. This one was organized by Nick Simpson and the criteria for this competition was all about Wooden Vases plus, meaning that there were certain additional criteria that were to be followed.
Although the main criteria was making Wooden Vases, Nick had placed some other requirements to this challenge to take account of the category each of our members were in. The Novice category had to make a Wooden Vase , no other requirement were asked for. The Intermediate category had to make a Wooden Vase that held water, a slightly more difficult thing to do. The Open category had to make a Wooden Vase with at least 2 wooden flowers, a different challenge all together.
Nick on this occasion could not attend the meeting due to illness so it was handled by Susan Drew to register the entries. The judges were on this occasion David Ross and John Ruickbie.
Here are pictures of the entries,
Only 2 entries in this category, somewhat disappointing we would have wished for so much more taking into account the subject matter.
A better response from this category with 5 entries, all of them had managed to deal with holding the water by one way or another although the judges pointed out that none of the inserts used to hold the water were easily removed for re-filling.
Again a very poor response with only 2 entries, although a much greater challenge in making the flowers we were hoping to see how each person dealt with the challenge.
The winner in the Novice category was Keith Brown. The winner in the Intermediate category was Geoff Potter and the winner in the Open category was Alec Mutch.
David Ross announced all the winners and a show of appreciation was given to all of them. The judges too were given a show of appreciation by the members. That concluded the Competition.
In addition to the Competition, 4 of 5 of our lathes were in operation organized by Geoff Potter, they were all doing their own thing, no criteria was placed on them it was just to occupy the members whilst the judging was taking place. Here are some pictures of the goings on.
Here we have Richard Sawicki being mentored by Julian Cox on making a very large Elm Bowl.
Here we see Richard working on the base of the bowl, it was greatly out of shape making the levelling up of the base quite difficult, however he did manage to get it to an even thickness by the end of the meeting, he will return to complete it another day.
Here we have Alan Smith working on an Elm bowl, in these pictures we can see he is working the base of his bowl.
Left, here we see Alan just starting to work the inside of his bowl. Right, here Alan is holding the bowl that he finished, unfortunately he like many others who do woodturning sometimes let their enthusiasm get the better of them and they go through the bottom, we have all done it, Alan will fix this by putting an insert of different wood in the bottom.
Here we have Marco Baglioni working on making a pencil holder from a piece of Mahogany.
Left, here we see Marco working on hollowing out the inside, and right, with the finished product.
Here we have Geoff Potter working on a piece of Ash that he will make into a Natural Edged bowl.
Left, here we see Geoff shaping the outside of his bowl, and right, the outside complete ready to start the inside.
That completes our meeting on the 8th August 2024, the next meeting is on the 22nd August and it will be myself doing off centre or multi centre turning, this will be a solo presentation so you will all get a seat, hope to see you all there.